1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of aligning flat products.
The present invention is especially suitable for use in the food industry, particularly for manufacturing flat products, such as biscuits or similar oven-baked products, to which the following description refers purely by way of example.
2. Discussion of the Background
Biscuits and the like are normally baked in tunnel type ovens through which they are fed on a conveyor, normally in neat side by side columns parallel to the traveling direction of the conveyor and defining neat rows perpendicular to the traveling direction.
The speed of the conveyor is so regulated as to bake the biscuits in the time taken for each row to travel between the input and output end of the oven.
On ovens of the aforementioned type, the same conveyor normally also provides for feeding the baked biscuits to an aligning device constituting the input device of a user unit, normally a wrapping line, and designed to arrange into a single column the products originally arranged, as stated, in a number of columns parallel to the traveling direction of the conveyor.
Known aligning devices normally comprise an accelerating device for spacing the biscuits in the original columns and feeding them to a concentrating device by which the original columns are formed into a single intersecting column for supply to the user unit.
The above method presents several drawbacks, mainly due to the single column supplied to the user unit being formed, as stated, by rearranging the existing columns into a single intersecting column, thus resulting in friction, impact and, possibly also, pile-up of the biscuits. The above method therefore results in frequent crumbling and/or breakage of the biscuits requiring frequent stoppage for cleaning the concentrating device and the line.